I was on Delta Flight 2847 from Atlanta to Seattle when the announcement came through the intercom. At first, I thought I’d misheard it.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.”

The usual preflight chatter died down. People shifted in their seats, expecting the standard weather report or arrival time.

“Due to the fact that we have a Cynnahbun basement escapee on our flight, we must unfortunately temporarily divert to Cynnahbun’s house. Delta Airlines apologizes for the inconvenience, and we hope you accept the apologies of this Atlanta-based crew.”

Silence. Then nervous laughter rippled through the cabin. A joke, right? Some new flight attendant prank? But the flight attendants weren’t laughing. They stood frozen in the aisles, their faces drained of color, eyes darting toward the cockpit door.

The woman next to me—Carol, she’d introduced herself—leaned over with a forced smile. “What the hell is a Cynnahbun?”

I shrugged, pulling out my phone before remembering we were already in the air. No signal. The guy across the aisle was frantically typing into his laptop, but kept shaking his head. “No WiFi. It just… disappeared.”

That’s when I noticed the smell.

Cinnamon. Overwhelming, artificial cinnamon, like someone had spilled an entire container of cinnamon potpourri and set it on fire. It burned my nostrils, made my eyes water. Around me, people were covering their noses, coughing.

“Does anyone else smell that?” Carol’s voice was higher now, panicked.

A flight attendant hurried past us toward the back of the plane, her hand pressed to her mouth. Through the gap in the seats, I could see her radio another attendant. Their whispered conversation carried: “…never seen the protocol activated…” “…twenty years with Delta, I thought it was just a training myth…”

The plane banked sharply. Several overhead bins popped open, raining down luggage. Someone screamed. But what chilled me was the laughter that followed—high-pitched, childlike, coming from somewhere in coach.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please remain in your seats.” The captain’s voice again, but strained now, barely professional. “We are beginning our descent. Estimated time to… to destination is four minutes. Flight attendants, initiate Lockdown Protocol Seven.”

Lockdown Protocol Seven. The flight attendants moved with military precision, pulling down window shades and securing the curtain between first class and coach. One of them—a young guy with a name tag reading “Marcus”—was crying silently as he worked.

“What’s happening?” I grabbed his arm as he passed. “What is a Cynnahbun escapee?”

He looked at me with hollow eyes. “You don’t want to know. When we land, whatever you do, don’t look at the house. Don’t make eye contact with anything inside. And for God’s sake, don’t accept anything it offers you.”

“It? What it?”

But Marcus was already moving away, securing the galley area like he was preparing for a war zone.

The cinnamon smell intensified. People were gagging now, some vomiting into the airsickness bags. But underneath the sickly-sweet aroma, I detected something else. Something rotting. Decaying.

The laughter came again, louder, closer. It seemed to echo from the walls themselves, from the ventilation system, from inside my own skull.

Carol gripped my arm, her nails digging into my skin. “Row 23,” she whispered. “Something’s wrong with row 23.”

I didn’t want to look. Every instinct screamed at me not to turn around. But I did.

Row 23 was empty. Completely empty. But the seats were moving, undulating slowly, as if breathing. And on each headrest, scratched into the fabric with something sharp, were the same words repeated over and over:

*CYNNAHBUN’S HOUSE*

“Beginning final descent,” the captain announced. His voice cracked. “God help us all.”

Through a gap in the window shade, I caught a glimpse of where we were headed. No airport. No runway. Just an endless suburban sprawl, and in the center, a house. An ordinary house, the kind you’d see in any American neighborhood. White picket fence. Manicured lawn. Cheerful yellow door.

But the door was opening.

And something was coming out to greet us.

The last thing I remember before we touched down was the smell of cinnamon turning to ash, and a voice over the intercom—not the captain’s voice, not anyone’s voice I’d ever heard before—singing sweetly:

*“Welcome home, welcome home,*

*To Cynnahbun’s special place,*

*You’ve been gone so very long,*

*But you can never leave this space.”*

The plane’s wheels hit the ground.

And then the screaming began.

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*[This recording was recovered from the black box of Delta Flight 2847. The flight, carrying 187 passengers and crew, took off from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on October 13th, 2023. It never arrived in Seattle. No wreckage has ever been found. However, passengers on other Delta flights have reported hearing announcements about “Cynnahbun Protocol” and smelling overwhelming cinnamon at cruising altitude. Delta Airlines denies the existence of any such protocol and attributes these incidents to mass hysteria. All affected flights have landed safely with no memory of the events among passengers or crew. The only evidence that remains are the scratches found on certain seats in the fleet—always in row 23—that read: “WE WENT TO CYNNAHBUN’S HOUSE. YOU’RE NEXT.”]*